My Thoughts on the “Tacti-cool” Craze

In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of all sorts of new interesting firearms hit the consumer market. Many of these firearms stray away from the traditional wood and steel construction of years past; instead these guns utilize hi-tech polymer and metal alloy frames and barrels, and feature lightweight and sleek profiles. Many of these guns look like something out of a sci-fi movie, especially when retrofitted with red-dot optics and CNC machining on the slide, as well as grip enhancements and extended magazines. This is starting to sound like something out of Call of Duty, right?

Following the influx of these new firearms and services came a large fan base of people who live and breath tactical firearms, so much to the point that that they’re willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a gun to make it look cool and possibly function better. These folks often post numerous pictures of their done-up Glocks and Sigs on Instagram, and usually post videos of them running through a pistol course with their guns, trying to look cool while shooting the targets. This type of activity by these folks has earned their group the name “Tacti-cool”, to kind of take a jab at them.

These “Tacti-cool” guns tend to resemble older competition pistols, which were usually flashy and modified. The difference is, the “tacti-cool” folks are carrying them as defensive weapons, but they seem to take more photos of the guns than time spent actually shooting them.

My general thoughts on this new craze are simple; I think it sucks, and I think its stupid. Spending that much money on making a gun look cool is ridiculous. The sudden switch to making a gun “look cool” taking precedence over actually being a good shooter is something that i don’t think i’ll ever understand. That being said, I firmly believe that everyone should do whatever they want with their guns as long as they aren’t hurting anybody, so at the end of the day its none of my business. But what I have a big problem with is the fact that many of these “Tacti-cool” people try to convince new and prospective shooters that they need to spend all of this money on upgrades for their guns, and if they don’t spend all that money, they apparently aren’t prepared to defend themselves properly. This, of course, is false and absurd. Many of these shooters may seem like they know what they’re doing, and I’m sure some of these shooters do, but don’t let them convince you that you need to spend all this money on anything other than a decent stock gun, some ammo, and some range time.